Global warming is real but catatrophic anthropomorhic global warming not. According to scientific theory (also written in the IPCC reports) a doubling of CO2 causes a .7 degree rise in global temperatures. Everything else is in the models. Read Tim Ball's climate deception.
I looked into the science myself and learned about it. Nir Shaviv is a physicist and climate change skeptic (link below). Even he accepts the 3.8 watt forcing from a doubling of CO2, which comes from the absorption characteristics of CO2 that have been experimentally determined. This is then multiplied by the climate sensitivity. For black bodies (which the Earth is not, it is visible from space so it is not black). the sensitivity is 0.21 which when multiplied by 3.8 gives 0.8 C, which I suspect is what your 0.7 figure is referring to.
In actually, the Earth IS visible from space, so it is a grey body, and Shaviv does the appropriate calculation and gets a value of 0.30 just like I do (see link 2). Multiplying this by 3.8 gives 1.1, which is the result I get, but Shaviv reports 1.2 degrees.
This is the value you would get with a bone-dry atmosphere. In actuality about 70% of the earth's surface is covered with water and the atmosphere contains lots of water vapor. Water is also a greenhouse gas. In grad school I learned warm air holds more water than cold air. In college I learned about thermodynamics, vapor pressure, and the Clausius Clapeyron equation. Using the simple idea that the average amount of water in the atmosphere rises in tandem with the rise in vapor pressure with temperature, I put this into my simply model (link 2) and arrived at a 0.45 value for sensitivity when you add in water to a grey earth. That brings up the temperature change to 1.7. for a doubling of CO2. The classic paper's results suggest a value of 0.53 for sensitivity here or a temp change of 2.0. They report a temp change of 2.3 degrees here, but also a 1,3 value for a grey earth, implying their forcing value came out at about 4.5 watts, rather than the modern value of 3.8 watts that Shaviv gives (and which I use).
OK. But now there are clouds, Here I just use Shaviv's arguments. He believes in the cosmic ray hypothesis, which was a big deal when I built my model. I found his material on this very convincing (recall this was when I was investigating these ideas back in 2007 and had not made up my mind on how seriously to take global warming). His argument was that cosmic rays influence climate because they affect low cloud formation (but not high cloud formation). They do this by providing nucleation sites. If you look at my model (link 2) you will see that high cloud is warming, but low cloud is cooling. (I illustrate this in my turning Earth into Venus section). So if cosmic rays stimulate low cloud formation, they induce a cooling effect and since these rays are inversely dependent on solar activity, this gives the sun a stronger effect on temperature than its direct effect would be (more sun, less low cloud, warmer temps). This whole argument is critically dependent on cosmic rays not affecting high cloud. Why? Because it is dry in the upper atmosphere, here water limits cloud formation, while in the lower atmosphere there is plenty of water and nucleation limits cloud formation.
It follows that if we have more water in the atmosphere, then there will be more available to form high cloud. We won't get more low cloud because its formation is dependent on nucleation not water. So, I assumed a strict proportional relation. 1% more water in the air gives 1% more high cloud and put it into the model. Sensitivity goes to 0.59 and now I get 2.2 degrees for doubling. My results fall into the range of more sophisticated calculations.
I come up with triple the 0.7 value you cite and can defend my entire approach, whereas your value seems based on a physically unrealistic bone-dry, completely black Earth, which it most certainly is not.
Excellent documentation of the greenhouse effect, which indeed is now contributing more to global warming than before human activities increased greenhouse gas emissions. Yet it doesn't address the relative contribution of this effect to other drivers of the earth's average temperature, and climate, which from the earth's long-term temperature record we can see are significant. Science isn't decided by majority rule. Nature is complex. Here's a view of climate change that accounts for other factors too. https://normanjansen.substack.com/p/climate-catastrophe
You write: We already have a rich history of climate models…that all greatly exaggerated warming.
You don’t cite any references illustrating your point. In my post I focus on the first climate model in 1967 that gave a value of 2.3 degrees of warming for a doubling of CO2 level. Since temperature is logarithmic in CO2 level this result is equivalent to
ΔT = 3.32 ln(Current CO2/(reference CO2)
With a CO2 level of 418 ppm in 2022 and reference CO2 level of 322 ppm in 1967[1] the predicted temperature rise since 1967 would be 0.87° C. Actual temperature rise over 1967-2022 has been about 0.9° C.[2] Seems to work fine for me.
You then suggest the true catastrophe we face is the huge national debt still increasing at an alarming rate. Well, that catastrophe[3] already happened during the decade after 1971 when President Nixon closed the gold window. Since 1971 the US has been on a fully fiat system, in which fiscal excess can translate into inflation, unless balanced out by opposing money flows, as has been the case over the last 20+ years.[4] An exception to this occurred during the pandemic years when truly large deficits overwhelmed financial flows and gave us a burst of inflation that is only dissipating now. The only risk of large deficits is potential inflation, insolvency is not possible because the borrower creates that which is used to repay the loan.
You write “While the greenhouse effect is real and does reduce the energy that radiates away from the earth into outer space, by far the dominant term in the earth’s energy balance is what comes from the sun.”
This is not actually true. It is variation in solar flux that matters for changes in the energy balance (i.e a small difference of two larger numbers). Large solar variations do happen locally (solar energy flux goes to zero every night). But the total energy received by the Earth’s surface varies very little with time, and it is changes in the total which exert a direct effect the global energy balance. (Indirect effects like the Milankovitch cycles can affect global temperature via feedback effects operating over long periods of time, but these take millennia to happen and so are not application to warming happening over human timescales).
I can answer this humorous rhetorical question “why do we accept continued high CO2 emissions from China” with another “why do we accept Chairman Xi becoming a dictator, instead of stepping down like his predecessors?” The answer to both is China can do what they like, they neither need nor want America’s blessing. 😊
Global warming is real but catatrophic anthropomorhic global warming not. According to scientific theory (also written in the IPCC reports) a doubling of CO2 causes a .7 degree rise in global temperatures. Everything else is in the models. Read Tim Ball's climate deception.
I looked into the science myself and learned about it. Nir Shaviv is a physicist and climate change skeptic (link below). Even he accepts the 3.8 watt forcing from a doubling of CO2, which comes from the absorption characteristics of CO2 that have been experimentally determined. This is then multiplied by the climate sensitivity. For black bodies (which the Earth is not, it is visible from space so it is not black). the sensitivity is 0.21 which when multiplied by 3.8 gives 0.8 C, which I suspect is what your 0.7 figure is referring to.
In actually, the Earth IS visible from space, so it is a grey body, and Shaviv does the appropriate calculation and gets a value of 0.30 just like I do (see link 2). Multiplying this by 3.8 gives 1.1, which is the result I get, but Shaviv reports 1.2 degrees.
This is the value you would get with a bone-dry atmosphere. In actuality about 70% of the earth's surface is covered with water and the atmosphere contains lots of water vapor. Water is also a greenhouse gas. In grad school I learned warm air holds more water than cold air. In college I learned about thermodynamics, vapor pressure, and the Clausius Clapeyron equation. Using the simple idea that the average amount of water in the atmosphere rises in tandem with the rise in vapor pressure with temperature, I put this into my simply model (link 2) and arrived at a 0.45 value for sensitivity when you add in water to a grey earth. That brings up the temperature change to 1.7. for a doubling of CO2. The classic paper's results suggest a value of 0.53 for sensitivity here or a temp change of 2.0. They report a temp change of 2.3 degrees here, but also a 1,3 value for a grey earth, implying their forcing value came out at about 4.5 watts, rather than the modern value of 3.8 watts that Shaviv gives (and which I use).
OK. But now there are clouds, Here I just use Shaviv's arguments. He believes in the cosmic ray hypothesis, which was a big deal when I built my model. I found his material on this very convincing (recall this was when I was investigating these ideas back in 2007 and had not made up my mind on how seriously to take global warming). His argument was that cosmic rays influence climate because they affect low cloud formation (but not high cloud formation). They do this by providing nucleation sites. If you look at my model (link 2) you will see that high cloud is warming, but low cloud is cooling. (I illustrate this in my turning Earth into Venus section). So if cosmic rays stimulate low cloud formation, they induce a cooling effect and since these rays are inversely dependent on solar activity, this gives the sun a stronger effect on temperature than its direct effect would be (more sun, less low cloud, warmer temps). This whole argument is critically dependent on cosmic rays not affecting high cloud. Why? Because it is dry in the upper atmosphere, here water limits cloud formation, while in the lower atmosphere there is plenty of water and nucleation limits cloud formation.
It follows that if we have more water in the atmosphere, then there will be more available to form high cloud. We won't get more low cloud because its formation is dependent on nucleation not water. So, I assumed a strict proportional relation. 1% more water in the air gives 1% more high cloud and put it into the model. Sensitivity goes to 0.59 and now I get 2.2 degrees for doubling. My results fall into the range of more sophisticated calculations.
I come up with triple the 0.7 value you cite and can defend my entire approach, whereas your value seems based on a physically unrealistic bone-dry, completely black Earth, which it most certainly is not.
http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-simple-math-model-for-global-warming
Excellent documentation of the greenhouse effect, which indeed is now contributing more to global warming than before human activities increased greenhouse gas emissions. Yet it doesn't address the relative contribution of this effect to other drivers of the earth's average temperature, and climate, which from the earth's long-term temperature record we can see are significant. Science isn't decided by majority rule. Nature is complex. Here's a view of climate change that accounts for other factors too. https://normanjansen.substack.com/p/climate-catastrophe
You write: We already have a rich history of climate models…that all greatly exaggerated warming.
You don’t cite any references illustrating your point. In my post I focus on the first climate model in 1967 that gave a value of 2.3 degrees of warming for a doubling of CO2 level. Since temperature is logarithmic in CO2 level this result is equivalent to
ΔT = 3.32 ln(Current CO2/(reference CO2)
With a CO2 level of 418 ppm in 2022 and reference CO2 level of 322 ppm in 1967[1] the predicted temperature rise since 1967 would be 0.87° C. Actual temperature rise over 1967-2022 has been about 0.9° C.[2] Seems to work fine for me.
You then suggest the true catastrophe we face is the huge national debt still increasing at an alarming rate. Well, that catastrophe[3] already happened during the decade after 1971 when President Nixon closed the gold window. Since 1971 the US has been on a fully fiat system, in which fiscal excess can translate into inflation, unless balanced out by opposing money flows, as has been the case over the last 20+ years.[4] An exception to this occurred during the pandemic years when truly large deficits overwhelmed financial flows and gave us a burst of inflation that is only dissipating now. The only risk of large deficits is potential inflation, insolvency is not possible because the borrower creates that which is used to repay the loan.
You write “While the greenhouse effect is real and does reduce the energy that radiates away from the earth into outer space, by far the dominant term in the earth’s energy balance is what comes from the sun.”
This is not actually true. It is variation in solar flux that matters for changes in the energy balance (i.e a small difference of two larger numbers). Large solar variations do happen locally (solar energy flux goes to zero every night). But the total energy received by the Earth’s surface varies very little with time, and it is changes in the total which exert a direct effect the global energy balance. (Indirect effects like the Milankovitch cycles can affect global temperature via feedback effects operating over long periods of time, but these take millennia to happen and so are not application to warming happening over human timescales).
I can answer this humorous rhetorical question “why do we accept continued high CO2 emissions from China” with another “why do we accept Chairman Xi becoming a dictator, instead of stepping down like his predecessors?” The answer to both is China can do what they like, they neither need nor want America’s blessing. 😊
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1091926/atmospheric-concentration-of-co2-historic/
[2] https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
[3] See fig 1 in https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-the-new-deal-order-fell
[4] https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-new-way-to-look-at-inflation-revised